Call Center chews bandwidth to watch sports
By Juan Dela Cruz

Most Filipinos around the world know of the great boxing sensation Manny Pacquaio. He’s a national treasure mainly due to his amazing boxing skills and exciting wins against the world’s best in the sport. So when he fights in the boxing ring, everything and everyone stops to watch this famous athlete duel it out on live TV. Well, almost everyone except call center agents on duty, stuck on their phones and PC answering call.

Not for this team of agents and their team leader in Sitel, Philippines. Their usual downtime at Sunday morning’s shift allowed them to pursue their desire to watch Pacquiao’s fight on their PC live. The idea stemmed from one of the agents who suggested they download the Sopcast software allowing them to watch the boxing match without leaving their stations. It was easy enough to do so especially without their manager present during those times. And so their likable team leader agreed to the idea. Ten of them downloaded the software and watched the fight live as if they had pay-per-view!

And so everyone was happy thinking since everyone is in on it, nobody would dare report them to their managers. Unfortunately, it was a different story from the guys at I.T. The techs were scrambling to find out what is causing the latency that other departments are complaining about. Soon enough they zeroed in on about ten PC’s playing live streaming videos. An I.T. supervisor went down the team’s floor and had the people stop their fun immediately. He had a ‘private talk’ with the team’s supervisor and told them this was prohibited on several grounds. Incident reports were sent out to the team’s manager and are waiting deliberation. The offense merits punishments anywhere between final written warnings to suspension.

What Filipinos would do to watch Pacquiao fight…?

(For questions or comments, please email me at 1delacruise at gmail dot com)